Dungeon Instance Owner change FTW
I had the misfortune of 1 cm story attempt (i was instance owner – hijacked and kicked), and some fractal attempts (the instance owner left at 3rd, instance owner left before everyone else could loot 4th fractal chest, I got kicked at 4th fractal with server lag/dc issues, and more) all this past weekend.
I was about to report the people I suspected of kicking me in the 4th fractal. I whispered 3 of the players ( the 5th player was using offline status during the entire run). Only 1 of them replied and they claimed there was no vote to kick. I still have screenshots during that dungeon run and of that last whisper but I didn’t submit the report.
My suggestions:
If the instance owner leaves (dc , rage quit, leaves party) the instance should remain open. If they were kicked (hijacked) then I’m all for having the instance terminated (but I’m sure there are trolls who will hijack LFGs just for the sake of kicking the instance owner to ruin the dungeon run.).
If the instance owner was kicked, they should have the option of re-entering the instance.
If any player is kicked, there should be a message in the chat log to notify who initiated and voted for the kick. There should be some way for the message to persist just in case the game doesn’t load right away (ie. server lag / dc issues).
Cannot agree with this more.
Transferring ownership should be automatic if the instance owner/party leader voluntarily leaves the party or dcs. However, if the party leader is kicked, the instance should close – the party members joined on conditions set by the leader, whether that’s through LFG or a guild group in which one person went in first.
This solution addressed both the instance hi-jacking problem as well as the original problem with the instance being lost when the leader leaves/dcs, and will only improve on the current LFG system and not harm it in any way.
(edited by MysticHLE.7160)
Currently, the dungeon “owner” in the party is the player character who speaks to the NPC’s in the cutscenes (particularly in Story Mode).
When the change is implemented and there’s no more “owner”, which player character in the party will be the one speaking to the NPC’s in the cutscenes?
As I mentioned in my thread on the topic, it would be great to have the number of needed kick votes increased to 3, to minimize griefing resulting from this change. Personally I always started my own dungeon parties to avoid kick-happy couples. Now there’s nothing to kep me safe. 2 votes have always been a bad idea, anyway. Not even a majority.
I actually agree with you. I would have liked to increase the vote count a majority with this change, but unfortunately not all the pieces of code around party votes are set up in a way to make this a quick and easy change.
We were aware of the possible issues with the instance ownership change, but felt that holding back an improvement to the base experience on account of trolls was unfair to users that are playing nice.
Stealing instances using the LFG tool, or booting people for no reason (or to give your buddy the rewards for no work) at the end of a run are bannable offenses and should be reported.
Your own game makes reporting them hard. When you leave a party and change zones, the game deletes all of your party messages. On top of that, you also clear any whispers you’ve sent and received. If I have to report someone, it’s got to be done before I’m even kicked from the party.
Ideally, the kick system would require N-1 votes to kick the player, assuring that as long as someone selects no, the kick fails.
I’m happy with the changes, so i can see who were in the party when i was kicked, but which report option should be used against dungeon instance stealers to be efficient? LFG tool abuse?
I want to make a suggestion. Each account can only do a kick 3 times a week, if kicking more than that, the account is suspended for a period of time. This will discourage un-friendly kicking.
If the party is simply bad for any reason, you can just leave party yourself not using kick. If someone goes dc/afk, add a new function called warning timer that other players can init. If the guy who dc/afk does not respond to the timer within 180 sec, system kicks him so no one needs to use his kick. So if you really needs to go afk during a dungeon and others approve, they won’t init the timer and will wait for you.
Normal players would not kick people often. Kick couner will only limit those who get used to do it often without thinking.